In this Discussion

A while back, Sibel said that she would spill all beans to a major news organization, and damn the consequences. Today, London's Sunday Times has published at least some of what she has to say.

Israel, Turkey and Pakistan, she says, have planted moles in ultra-secure United States institutions involving our nuclear security -- including Los Alamos. (According to Joseph Trento, Pakistan has acted as something of a "cut out" for Saudi Arabia on nucelar matters.)

“If you made public all the information that the FBI have on this case, you will see very high-level people going through criminal trials,” she said.

Her story shows just how much the West was infiltrated by foreign states seeking nuclear secrets. It illustrates how western government officials turned a blind eye to, or were even helping, countries such as Pakistan acquire bomb technology.

The wider nuclear network has been monitored for many years by a joint Anglo-American intelligence effort. But rather than shut it down, investigations by law enforcement bodies such as the FBI and Britain’s Revenue & Customs have been aborted to preserve diplomatic relations.

The moles were not just protected -- they were aided by high-ranking U.S. personnel.

The Turks and Israelis had planted “moles” in military and academic institutions which handled nuclear technology. Edmonds says there were several transactions of nuclear material every month, with the Pakistanis being among the eventual buyers. “The network appeared to be obtaining information from every nuclear agency in the United States,” she said.

They were helped, she says, by the high-ranking State Department official who provided some of their moles – mainly PhD students – with security clearance to work in sensitive nuclear research facilities.

Why would American's do such thing? Good old-fashioned bribery plays a large part...

In one conversation Edmonds heard the official arranging to pick up a $15,000 cash bribe. The package was to be dropped off at an agreed location by someone in the Turkish diplomatic community who was working for the network.

The Turks, she says, often acted as a conduit for the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s spy agency, because they were less likely to attract suspicion. Venues such as the American Turkish Council in Washington were used to drop off the cash, which was picked up by the official.

Wrap your minds around that: Betraying your country for a mere $15,000.

Sibel brings in a name that should be very familiar to Cannonfire readers: The Pakistani operation was led by General Mahmoud Ahmad, then the ISI chief.

Intercepted communications showed Ahmad and his colleagues stationed in Washington were in constant contact with attachés in the Turkish embassy.

Intelligence analysts say that members of the ISI were close to Al-Qaeda before and after 9/11.

Ahmad -- or Ahmed, the transliteration more often seen -- has been persuasively accused of funneling $100,000 to Mohammed Atta. Although he no longer controls the Pakistani equivalent of the CIA, Ahmed has been called the major player in Pakistan's enormous drug trade.

More than any other Pakistani, Ahmed was responsible for the creation of the Taliban. There are those who say that he arranged the escape of Osama Bin Laden and comrades into his country; others say that Ahmed is the real leader of Al Qaeda.

Benazir Bhutto blamed Ahmed for the first assassination attempt against her. We may never know if he engineered the attack that succeeded.

How the hell could Ahmed get away with all of this? This man's name should be as notorious as Osama Bin Laden's -- yet few Americans have heard of him. Why?

The series of bribes outlined by Sibel Edmonds goes some ways toward offering an explanation. But the strange fact is that Ahmad has also maintained strong ties to the American neoconservative movement. Forgive the self-quotation:

The ISI Director worked closely with the CIA for many years, and it is known that he met with Richard Armitage, a key player in the Reagan, Bush I and Bush II administrations. (Armitage helped stop Valerie Plame's efforts against nuke proliferation, and signed the infamous PNAC letter which laid the groundwork for the Iraq debacle.)

Back to the Times story:

The results of the espionage were almost certainly passed to Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani nuclear scientist.

Khan was close to Ahmad and the ISI. While running Pakistan’s nuclear programme, he became a millionaire by selling atomic secrets to Libya, Iran and North Korea. He also used a network of companies in America and Britain to obtain components for a nuclear programme.

Get the picture? Valerie Plame was trying to stop Khan in his tracks. But Armitage stopped Valerie Plame in her tracks. Armitage and his neocon comrades are good buddies with Mehmood Ahmad, who was engineering this trade in nukes.

Edmonds was later to see the scope of the Pakistani connections when it was revealed that one of her fellow translators at the FBI was the daughter of a Pakistani embassy official who worked for Ahmad. The translator was given top secret clearance despite protests from FBI investigators.

The FBI's behavior cannot be excused as mere sloppiness.

The times received substantial confirmation of Edmonds' story from CIA and FBI sources:

One of the CIA sources confirmed that the Turks had acquired nuclear secrets from the United States and shared the information with Pakistan and Israel. “We have no indication that Turkey has its own nuclear ambitions. But the Turks are traders. To my knowledge they became big players in the late 1990s,” the source said.

Some of the most intriguing material appears at the beginning of the Times piece.

She approached The Sunday Times last month after reading about an Al-Qaeda terrorist who had revealed his role in training some of the 9/11 hijackers while he was in Turkey.

The reference almost certainly goes to Louai al-Sakka, whom we have dealt with before. As we detailed in our earlier post, Sakka (or Sakra) was almost certainly giving information to Western intelligence in 2001, at which point he was in Germany. Later, in 2005, while he languished in a Turkish prison, he was visited by a group of Americans who promised him freedom if he testified falsely against Syria -- or so he has claimed.

The strange pattern keeps repeating itself: The terrorists have ties to factions within the American security apparat.

The Times has not published all of Sibel Edmonds' story. She fingers one well-known State Department official as a recipient of Turkish bribes. The accused individual strongly denies the claim, and the Times will not publish his name. (Libel laws are more stringent in the U.K.)

However, Edmonds said: “He was aiding foreign operatives against US interests by passing them highly classified information, not only from the State Department but also from the Pentagon, in exchange for money, position and political objectives.”

She claims that the FBI was also gathering evidence against senior Pentagon officials – including household names – who were aiding foreign agents.

Who can the mystery man be? I'm thinking either Armitage -- who is second-in-command at State -- or Marc Grossman, who was United States Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs from 2001. Grossman also played a still-nebulous role in Plame-gate. Not only that: He met with General Ahmed on or around September 11, 2001!

(Update: BradBlog confirms that Edmonds tagged Grossman. Keep in mind that Armitage and Grossman are thisclose.)

Grossman's name has previously come up in stories about Sibel Edmonds:

Furthermore, the language specialist has repeatedly stated in past interviews that investigations into pre-9/11 terrorist financing activities were blocked “per State Department request”, leaving open the question whether it was Mr. Grossman, then Undersecretary of State for European Affairs, who actively hindered investigations into the Turkey-Bin Laden link.

Yes, I know that this has been a long, dense post. But the story is pretty simple, really, when boiled down to its essence.

Terrorists had a lot of drug money. They used that money to buy officials in the U.S., who allowed moles to enter our most sensitive installations.

The overall objective? Remember, this all comes down to giving the Bomb to our enemies. The ramifications of that scenario are almost too terrible to contemplate.

That's the guts of it. After the jump, I'll quote some older stories which may help shed light on the above.

Sakka and the spooks: I'm still not sure why news reports about this man triggered Edmonds to go into action. But the following may be of interest.

According to the Turkish newspaper Zaman, 2000 was the year when the Americans "turned" Sakka, who received an unspecified (but large) amount of money from the CIA. More than that: He received protection during his time in Turkey -- while he ran those Al Qaeda training camps.

Then came his mysterious sojourn in Germany in 2000-2001. During this period, he appears to have met Atta -- and then he went "underground.

Germany's BND -- their version of the CIA -- aided Sakka while he was on the run. This, despite the fact that Sakka was considered a wanted man in Germany, due to his role in earlier terror plots.

In late 2005, after Sakra’s arrest in Turkey (see July 30, 2005), the German television news show Panorama will report that the German BKA (Federal Office of Criminal Investigation) suspects the German BND (Federal Intelligence Service) to have helped Sakra escape from Germany in late 2001. Supposedly, German police had learned where he was staying in Germany, but the BND enabled him to escape via France to Syria in order to prevent further investigations about him. Panorama will report that Sakra was secretly still working for Syrian intelligence and was giving them information about al-Qaeda’s leadership. Sakra will go on to mastermind a series of suicide bombings in Istanbul, Turkey, in 2003...

We cannot know what Sakka was up to in Syria, but one thing seems clear: Western intelligence placed greater value on his services than on bringing a 9/11 plotter to justice. His protection continued in the face of the 1999 plots, the 9/11 tragedy, and the 2003 bombings. It ended only when he decided to go after Israeli ships.

At his 2005 trial, his lawyer offered an intriguing observation:

Sakra’s lawyer will claim that if Sakra revealed all that he knew, “a few states would collapse.”

And now for some previously-published words about General Mehmood Ahmed:

According to various accounts:

1. He wired money to Mohammed Atta shortly before the World Trade Center attacks.

4. He sent fighters against India to be trained in Al Qaeda camps -- essentially using Osama Bin Laden's jihadist movement as a cut-out.

5. He helped arrange the escape of thousands of Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters into Pakistan.

6. He is said to have have arranged -- or so runs a widely-held belief -- the fake arrest of WTC attack mastermind Khaled Sheihk Mohammed.

Here is what Sibel said about Ahmed last year, in a phone call with lukery (when she still felt bound by the gag order):

"You seem to know how to connect some of these dots; do so pretty well. Yet, even some of the savvy media here don't get it (or don't want to!). You picked the Zogby report, even though it was written a while ago (good research); cleverly put it together with Mahmud, Grossman, and even Brewster Jennings....

Joe Wilson met his wife, Plame, at ATC (American Turkish Council) in 1997. Look up his book, it is there.

Brewster Jennings, Plame, dealt with ATC, ATA, and Turkey a lot. Her UC job took him* to Turkey more than 4-5 times to Turkey between 1997 & 2001. This info has been printed on the front-page of main Turkish papers.

IAI, International Advisors Inc, owned & operated by Perle & Feith, was set up & registered as 'Agents for Turkey.'"

Also see lukery's piece here:

The letter noted that Under Secretary Feith was a registered foreign agent for Turkey from 1989-1994 while serving as a principal for International Advisors Inc., and that he was a special assistant to Richard Perle at the Defense Department, while Perle was a paid consultant for IAI for Turkey. Feith negotiated an $800,000 contract for IAI with Turkey in 1989 and a $600,000 annual contract through 1994. They proposed that this should require Mr. Feith and Mr. Perle to remove themselves from matters concerning US-Turkey relations.

The letter also urges the President not to give Turkey any of the $228 million authorized by Congress for Turkey at the initiative of the Defense Department, until an investigation is made into the circumstances of its initiation. "When Richard Perle was the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security from 1981-1987 during the Reagan Administration, he led the successful effort to give massive grant military aid to Turkey," they wrote, adding that Feith was on his staff at the time. "Wolfowitz and Grossman actively supported sending high levels of arms to Turkey. Weapons supplied by the US were used by the Turkish army against the Kurds since 1984 and are being used at the present time." [snip] The World Policy Institute and the Federation of American Scientists have documented the US arms trade with Turkey and its harmful effects on US interests in a comprehensive joint report, "Arming Repression: US Arms Sales to Turkey During the Clinton Administration.""

A reader named Tom sent in this interesting response:

While Mahmood undoubtedly is a "most taboo suspect" re: 9/11 financing and the Pak military role in cultivating Taliban/al-Qaeda elements in Afghanistan, Kashmir, Iran, etc. there are many other top ISI/Army officers -- including Musharraf himself -- playing similar roles.

Despite his cultivated image as a "pro-Western, anti-extremist" leader, Musharraf initiated the provocative "Kargil" fiasco that nearly led to nuclear war between India and Pakistan in the 1990s. A protege of former ISI director Hamid Gul, Musharraf himself (like Gul, Mahmood Ahmad) has always sought to destabilize Afghanistan as a wedge against India (the so-called policy of "strategic depth"). It was Musharraf who facilitated the rise of various Kashmiri jihadi groups (Lashkar-e-Taiba [LeT], Jaish-e-Mohammed [JeM]) -- al-Qaeda associates still in existence!

Additionally, Musharraf was instrumental in continuing General Zia and Gul's nuclear proliferation policies as Pak military cash cow (known and covered-up by successive US administration's from Carter to Bush II).

In my opinion, it is a mistake to view these events, up to and including Bhutto's assassination, as the actions of "rogue" elements within the Pakistani military establishment. Indeed, these elements are the establishment, Musharraf included.

Having said this, we should also not forget that Pakistan's ISI continues to be instrumental in the explosive growth of Afghanistan's drug trade. These too, are hardly the actions of "rogue" operatives, but rather constitute a formidable reservoir of funds for various ISI "black operations." Just like the CIA!

I have decided that after years of not getting anyone to publish what I have found out about the Edmonds case, I am simply going to give you folks some names. I won't explain what the allegations are, or how these people might fit together or even if they fit together. I also don't claim to have all the names or know the full story by any means. But I am certain, that brilliant bloggers, researchers, and journalists will finally figure it out:

The former FBI translator has named all the individuals who -- she says -- played a role in the convoluted tale of treasonous activity that she uncovered while working for the Bureau. The information comes to us in an interesting way: She provided photos, and lukery provides names. As added value, I'm including a few biographical details. (Larisa Alexandrovna offers her own list here.)

Here they are:

1. Pentagon and State Department officials...

Richard Perle: Chairman of the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee (2001-2003), leading member of neocon groups PNAC, JINSA and WINEP.(He's a registered Democrat, believe it or not, out of respect for Scoop Jackson.)

Douglas Feith: Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, 2001-2005; head of the Office of Special Plans (Pentagon intel/propaganda unit accused of using forged evidence); JINSA.

Eric Edelman: Principal Deputy Assistant to the Vice President for National Security Affairs (2001-2003); former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey (2003-2005); current Under Secretary of Defense for Policy.

Marc Grossman: United States Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs (2001-2005) Met with Pakistan's notorious intelligence head, General Mahmoud Ahmed, just before September 11, 2001.

Brent Scowcroft: Chairman of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (2001-2005). Founder of the Scowcroft Group and The Forum for International Policy.

Larry Franklin: Officer in the Office of Special Plans, guilty to disclosing classified information to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)

2. Congress-critters...

Dennis Hastert: R-IL. House Speaker 1999-2005. (The only Speaker to last longer in the job than -- urp! -- Joseph Cannon.) Connected to Abramoff scandal.

Roy Blunt: R-MO. House member from 1997; current House Minority Whip. Heavily tied to the tobacco industry nand to Tom Delay; considered one of the most corrupt members of Congress.

Dan Burton: R-IN. House member since 1983. Notorious for going on lobbyist-funded golf junkets and for voting against bills that would prevent lobbyist bribery. (He once recommended placing an aircraft carrier off the coast of Bolivia, a land-locked country.)

Tom Lantos: D-CA. Representing San Mateo in the House since 1981; will soon step down due to illness. Holocaust survivor and fighter in the anti-Nazi underground. Chairman of the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

Bob Livingston: R-LA. House Member 1977-1999; resigned over revelation of extramarital affairs. Since then, he has been a lobbyist, operating on behalf of Turkey.

Stephen Solarz: D-NY. House member 1975–1993; National Democratic Institute for International Affairs; Intellibridge.

3. Think tankers -- primarily the Washington Institute on Near East Policy, WINEP...

Graham E. Fuller: RAND. (I'm not sure of the role played by RAND in Sibel's story, but Larisa has advised readers to pay special attention here.) From this bio: "an independent writer, analyst, lecturer and consultant on Muslim World affairs and Adjunct Professor of History at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver."

David Makovsky: WINEP. CFR. American scholar and Israeli journalist. Former editor of The Jerusalem Post. Bio here. "In March 1995, with assistance from U.S. officials, Mr. Makovsky was given unprecedented permission to file reports for an Israeli publication from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

Yusuf Turani: This bio is pretty fascinating. He grew up under harsh conditions in a labor camp in Eastern Turkistan, which was under the control of China. He later stayed in Saudi Arabia and Turkey, then moved to the United States, where he became a physics teacher and a musician. He has devoted himself to freeing his homeland.

Professor Sabri Sayari: Georgetown, WINEP, RAND. Executive Director of the Institute of Turkish Studies and a Research Professor in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.

Mehmet Eymur: Connected to the MIT, Turkey's National Intelligence Organization (Turkey's CIA). Lukery incorrectly labels him the former head of the MIT; he actually directed the Department for Counter-Espionage. Forced out in 1987. Accused of involvement in the bloody Taksim Square Massacre of May 1 1977 and the March 30, 1972 Kizildere massacre. Linked with Operation Gladio, the Grey Wolves and other Turkish ultra-nationalist groups; see here, where he is accused of heading an "illegal group" within MIT. (I'm not nearly as informed on Tukish history as I ought to be; however, I am reminded of the parallel situation in Italy's SISMI.)

In this group, the haunting names are Tom Lantos (who has acted quite courageously on Darfur and who has always been quite good on domestic issues) and Yusuf Tarani, about whom I would like to know more. At this point, nothing said about guys like Hastert or Edelman or Feith could possibly surprise me.

Larisa lists various groups worthy of study, including the Grey Wolves. This was the fascist Turkish party which counted Mehmet Ali Agca -- the guy who shot the Pope -- among its members. Some of the neocons currently troubling the world conspired to spread the lie that Agca did what he did on behalf of the KGB; naturally, they covered up his Grey Wolves background.Cannonfire

Why does no one want to look into Sibel’s accusations? I would guess that it is partly because her tale involves Washington’s most powerful foreign policy lobby, that of Israel, and also the less powerful but undeniably important lobby of Turkey. But it is also due to the fact that both Democrats and Republicans are the evildoers in her story as well as senior officials in the Pentagon and State Department who served in both Democratic and Republican administrations. It is a can of worms that no one wants to touch, which is precisely why it should be opened and examined if the public is every to regain faith in government.

Some of Sibel’s allegations would be extraordinary at any time and are almost hard to believe. She reports that the CIA was covertly supporting al-Qaeda linked groups in the Balkans and central Asia right up until 9/11. She tells how a reporter at the New York Times was fed material by senior state department official Marc Grossman who was at the time taking bribes from Turkish contacts while alerting Turkish and Pakistani intelligence officers to the fact that Valerie Plame’s company Brewster-Jennings was a CIA cover unit engaged in preventing nuclear proliferation. Sibel names Pentagon insiders who obtained personnel information on government employees and contractors so that they could be targeted by foreign intelligence officers. She reveals that congressman Tom Lantos was openly passing classified information on to the government of Israel and that Israel would take what it wanted and then pass the remainder on to the Turks. Sibel describes how highly sensitive information from US defense labs would be collected by foreign graduate students carefully inserted into the labs then sold to the intelligence services of countries like Pakistan that were developing their own nuclear weapons. She details how one married Democratic congresswoman who was bisexual was targeted by Turkish agents and filmed being seduced by a woman who was provided for her, possibly to enable blackmail to secure the congresswoman’s cooperation. Sibel’s tale includes descriptions of how other congressmen received bribes and illegal political contributions and were rewarded by being given well-paying jobs ever after, with several of them now working for Turkish companies or as lobbyists for Turkey. She confirms that the Bush Administration was seeking to attack Iraq long before the twin towers fell, detailing how before 9/11 several Pentagon officials discussed with the Turkish government the invasion and division of Iraq into "spheres of influence" between Washington and London. The talks broke down when Ankara decided that it wanted its own slice of the pie.

And no one seems to care. Congressman Henry Waxman, formerly chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform committee, seemed interested in Sibel Edmonds’ story and appeared willing to open hearings, but his enthusiasm vanished at some point and he refused to return her calls. Was it because Israel was involved that Waxman developed cold feet? Was it because some of the traitors were Democrats? Quite possibly a combination of the two, though it is only my speculation. The current chairman of the committee Edolphus Towns has displayed no interest in the Edmonds case in spite of the Obama Administration’s pledge to bring change to government.

It is clear that if the citizens of the United States are every actually to hear what Sibel Edmonds has to say it will be because the people demand it. It is time to call one’s congressman and ask "What about Sibel Edmonds?" It is time to write letters to the newspapers and television news media demanding that her story be told. If there is ever to be even a minimum of accountability and a restoration of some measure of integrity in government it has to start somewhere. Why not start by listening to Sibel Edmonds?http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2009/09/23/listening-to-sibel-edmonds/